The Evolution of Montford Park from Parking Lot to Community

Revitalizing aging office parks has been one of Grubb Properties’ key strategies. The concept is relatively straightforward:

• Purchase well-located office buildings with large surface parking lots;
• Upgrade the office properties and repurpose the parking lots for essential housing; and
• Build parking decks that serve office tenants by day and residents by night through a shared parking model.

One of the best examples of this strategy can be seen through the windows of Grubb Properties’ main corporate office. In September 2014, we purchased a 1970s-era office building near Montford Drive, a developing entertainment hub in Charlotte. Soon after, we added an adjacent ten-story office building to our portfolio, giving us an entire block of more than 10 acres. 

Our first step was give energy-efficient upgrades to the two existing commercial buildings. We further upgraded the dated – some might say ugly – ten-story office building with significant sustainability upgrades. In addition to interior renovations, we refaced the façade, extending the interior floorplates and giving the whole building a more modern appearance.

Once this was underway, we started to work on constructing multifamily developments in the parking lots, replacing the aging asphalt with two new Link Apartments℠ communities. By rezoning the land for multifamily development, we essentially got the sites for free – savings we can pass on to residents in the form of lower rents. We also constructed a parking garage to service both the office tenants and our residents in a shared-parking arrangement, another effective cost-saving measure.

With the completion of Link Apartments℠ Montford Phase II, we have essentially replaced an environmentally unfriendly asphalt parking lot with a vibrant, landscaped, mixed-use neighborhood. We are underway on a similar project in Atlanta and continue to seek out locations that meet our five pillars of resiliency to further expand.

Learn more about essential housing and Grubb Properties’ approach to Private Equity Real Estate Investing.